PAAM’s Art Reach grows up and expands

By Susan Blood Banner Correspondent

Sunday

Sep 30, 2018 at 5:28 PMSep 30, 2018 at 5:29 PM

Art Reach, the free, multidisciplinary program at Provincetown Art Association and Museum, got off to a rocky start ten years ago. With seed money from a Youth Reach grant from Massachusetts Cultural Council and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lynn Stanley, the curator of education at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, launched Art Reach and Art on the Edge in 2008 — in the middle of a global financial crisis.

“Successfully making it through that first winter felt like a miracle in itself,” Stanley says.

Art Reach is PAAM’s award-winning after-school program for youth aged 13 and up, and Art on the Edge is its middle school counterpart. Both provide instruction, transportation and materials free of charge to young people in Provincetown and beyond. The programs have grown and evolved over the last ten years, inspiring new projects along the way, such as the new Art Reach 101, which launches Oct. 3.

Instead of the two day a week commitment of Art Reach studio program, Art Reach 101 will meet for one day a week only. The focus of the first semester is comics, graphic novels and zines, with animation in the second semester. The program is designed for young people who aren’t necessarily interested in drawing from observation, have an interest in comics and zines, or want to give the program a try before making a bigger commitment.

“Art Reach 101 is also designed to make connections with students who may not know exactly what they want to do, but know what they like,” Stanley says. The new class was a confluence of student interest and the arrival of a gifted new teacher, Karen Knighton. Knighton is passionate about comics and zines, and taught in the Art on the Edge program last year.

“We’ve been lucky to have gifted artists teaching in the program, who have driven content,” Stanley says. “Tracey Anderson, who worked as a lead teacher in Art Reach for eight years, brought a background in digital and traditional music, digital game play and design, graphic novels and comics, a broad foundation in art history, and training as a traditional artist. Vicky Tomayko is a master printmaker who joined the program in 2012, and currently serves as a lead teacher. She’s taught drypoint etching, silk screen, lithography and relief printing, along with other traditional media, including drawing and painting.”

“The structure developed and evolved,” Anderson says. “When you’re grant funded you have to have certain structures in place, but we also assessed rigorously and collected data to see where we were successful and where we weren’t.” As a result, Anderson says, it was student interest that shaped her role.

“One of the keys to the progression of the program is that people have been returning year after year,” Tomayko says. “A lot of the students have come up from the Art on the Edge program and gone on to Art Reach, so they have been in the program six years or so. They start to have opinions about what they want to do, or want to explore something more in depth.”

In 2013, Art Reach received the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program award from First Lady Michelle Obama, a welcome accolade at the program’s five year mark. Stanley traveled to the White House with Provincetown Art Reacher Lukas Hernandez to receive the award.

Over the years Art Reach has formed partnerships with the Nauset and Monomoy school districts, Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School and Cape Cod Regional Technical High School, and works with kids from Marstons Mills to Provincetown.

Stanley says there are challenges, and running youth programs is a perpetual leap of faith. But in the end it’s worth it. “When I know I’ve been, in part, responsible for creating the kind of environment I desperately needed when I was their age, I feel grateful to everyone who has allowed me to realize all the youth programs that are currently offered at PAAM.”